Community/Fan Projects
Since the time of the last Satellaview broadcast, numerous fan sites have cropped up to memorialize the system and/or to attempt to keep its spirit alive. As the Satellaview was only released in Japan, the overwhelming majority of these sites have been Japanese-language sites. Today, due in part to the dissolution of St.GIGA and the attempts by Nintendo to distance itself from what has been considered a failed system, as well as to the inevitable progress of subsequent technologies, much of the information that once existed on the system has been lost to time. As a consequence, numerous modern sites serve more quasi-archeological purposes and engage in historical research about the system. The research conducted it often inspired by interest in specific games from popular series such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Kirby, Fire Emblem, the Chrono series, etc. In the community at large, fans of related topics such as the Super Nintendo or the St.GIGA radio station also occasionally cover the Satellaview due to an emphasis on completism. As such, informative articles have appeared in several generalist info sources as Wikipedia, Giant Bomb, and Mario Wiki, and even in blogs and individual fanpages such as thenoisingmachine and blamethecontrolpadKiddoCabbusses. Artcles from elsewhere!. Satellablog. 22 May 2009.KiddoCabbusses. Machine Translations are (not) fun.. Satellablog. 27 October 2008.KiddoCabbusses. Machine Translations are (not) fun.. Satellablog. 27 October 2008. In general all Satellaview fan-groups share a unity of purpose and a common goodwill due to the rarity of contact with others sharing an interest in the defunct system, however occasional disagreements arise form time to time. Apart from individual disagreements about the degree to which restoration should adhere to the original materials and disagreements about even the nature of the original materials, the biggest problems that arise come from lack of communication between fan-groups of differing languagesKiddoCabbusses. BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤 変更 日本 (Now with three different translations attempts!). Satellablog. 23 April 2010. and from profiteers cashing in on the hard work of others. The vast majority of projects and events are completed freely (i.e. without financial gain to the participants), and in cases where fans in the Satellaview-community collect money in the form of donations, these funds are applied to further research and/or material restoration. Despite this, occasional instances in which individuals have attempted to sell restored material online at auction sites such as eBay have been noted. Such acts are almost universally frowned-upon by restoration groups and fans.KiddoCabbusses. You won't like it when eBayers pricegouge your own hard work for personal profit, either.. Satellablog. 12 December 2008. The Satellaview-specific community Historical communities *SatellaOFF events - A series of events that occurred toward the very end of the lifetime of the Satellaview and for a period immediately after the last Satellaview broadcast. These events took the form of meet-ups between friends who had met through a common interest in Satellaview gaming. *BS-X Cult - A Satellaview ROM site from the 1990s maintained by Pachuka, BS-X Cult was an offshoot of Pachuka's earlier EmuCult website.KiddoCabbusses. Digging into the history of Satellaview emulation and ROM dumping.. Satellablog. 10 December 2008.KiddoCabbusses. Digging into the history of Satellaview emulation and ROM dumping.. Satellablog. 10 December 2008. BS-X Cult hosted a number of exceptionally rare Satellaview ROMs and prototypes that Pachuka claimed to have stolen from a person known as ROMar. ROMar appears to have been the origin of the BS Dragon Quest prototype and is speculated to have been the origin of the BS Zelda games.KiddoCabbusses. So, what’s up with the BS Dragon Quest ROM anyway?. Satellablog. 1 June 2010.KiddoCabbusses. BS Dragon Quest. Satellablog. 29 April 2008. The current version of this website (still maintained by Pachuka) is X-Cult. *Satellablog at blogspot.com - A Satellaview-oriented blog from the late 2000s whose objective was to spread information about the Satellaview, to correct misinformation already present on the web, and to host videos of unreleased games and archived radio programs related to the Satellaview. The blog's maintainer allowed comments in the hope that readers would correct any errors they noticed.KiddoCabbusses. About this Blog.. Satellablog. 29 April 2008. Requests for blog topics had also been welcomed, and occasionally Japanese-language articles on Satellaview-related topics had been translated into English.KiddoCabbusses. Missed Christmas, New Years, but not much news. :(. Satellablog. 4 January 2009. The blog's maintainer made great efforts to allow for international intercommunication by linking to auto-translation tools and by writing several posts nearly entirely in Japanese or other languages.KiddoCabbusses. I've been found!. Satellablog. 2 December 2008. The blog recommended viewing under Opera 96 or Firefox 3.KiddoCabbusses. Hastily done new design.. Satellablog. 25 October 2008. In 2009, due to mounting technical difficultiesKiddoCabbusses. Absense (;[n[])]. Satellablog. 16 August 2008.KiddoCabbusses. NOTE ABOUT OLD POSTS. Satellablog. 18 September 2008. and for accuracy reasons, the blog reorganized and moved its location.KiddoCabbusses. Note on the blog's status: Moving plans.. Satellablog. 6 April 2009.KiddoCabbusses. Moved!. Satellablog. 20 April 2009. The site hasn't been updated since August 26, 2009 and is no longer maintained.KiddoCabbusses. Notes on the Blog’s move.. Satellablog. 14 April 2009. Modern fan community *Satellaview Heaven - A Satellaview-oriented fan blog with info on games like BS Simcity and Satella-Q, and pictures of Satellaview merchandise and prizesKiddoCabbusses. Machine Translations are still (not) fun - But these are important links.. Satellablog. 28 October 2008.KiddoCabbusses. Machine Translations are still (not) fun – But these are important links.. Satellablog. 28 October 2008. *Satellaview History Museum - A Japanese fan site covering the schedule of Satellaview broadcasts in great depth. *Satellaview Memorial - A Japanese fan site discussing the last days of the Satellaview *Satellaview Wiki - Japanese blog not affiliated with The English Satellaview Wiki *Satellablog - An English-language Satellaview-oriented fan blog. The blog is an updated and reorganized version of the old Satellablog (at Blogspot) which is no longer maintained.KiddoCabbusses. Notes on the Blog’s move.. Satellablog. 14 April 2009.KiddoCabbusses. Moved!. Satellablog. 20 April 2009. The maintainer of the new blog has exerted much effort toward the related goals of increased communication about the Satellaview and restoring original data and Satellaview-related material. In order to increase communication, the blog allows for international intercommunication by linking to auto-translation tools and by making occasional posts nearly entirely in Japanese of other languages.KiddoCabbusses. I've been found!. Satellablog. 2 December 2008. Further efforts to increase communication and awareness about the Satellaview have led the Satellablog to maintain an IRC presenceKiddoCabbusses. Satellablog on IRC.. Satellablog. 16 May 2009. (currently at currently on irc.caffie.netKiddoCabbusses. Minor IRC note:. Satellablog. 4 November 2009.) and to launch The English Satellaview Wiki.KiddoCabbusses. Working on a Wiki!. Satellablog. 17 September 2009. In order to further the goal of restoration of original material, the Satellablog also accepts financial and electronic donations which are applied directly to gaining and preserving Satellaview-related material.KiddoCabbusses. REMINDER: Monies plz. (Donations). Satellablog. 16 September 2009.KiddoCabbusses. Just how difficult is getting new stuff? A sorta-personal story.. Satellablog. 1 June 2010. *Mikarin's Tekitou Page *Mikarin at sound.jp Specific broadcast game communities * What is BS Fire Emblem? - A fan page covering BS Fire Emblem * Tamori Picross - Jupiter Corporation's product information page for Tamori Picross * RADICAL DREAMERS fansite - A fan page covering Radical Dreamers * The BS Zelda Shrine - One of the oldest Satellaview-related English pages on the internet, The BS Zelda Shrine covers BS Zelda no Densetsu, BS Zelda no Densetsu MAP2, and BS Zelda Inishie no Sekiban, and is home to a forum-style bulletin board relating to the BS Zelda series, the Satellaview in general, and related topics.KiddoCabbusses. Redundant Reminder: The BS Zelda Homepage is moving!. Satellablog. 11 October 2010. Although the site has moved locations in the past, currently it is hosted by Zelda Legends - a website devoted to The Legend of Zelda series generally.KiddoCabbusses. Busy busy busy – 1: Correction! XP. Satellablog. 18 October 2010. The broader communities * Elude Visibility - a ROM Dumper site. * SFC Mania - A Super Famicom fan site with coverage of the Satellaview including pictures of Satellaview games and links to zoome videos of games such as Kirby no Omocha Hako. * St.GIGA Forever - A St.GIGA fan site devoted primarily to the ambient music portions of St.GIGA's broadcasts. Fan projects With the advent of emulation support for Satellaview games, several game-specific fan groups have sprung up to attempt to recreate old games once considered lost forever. Recreationist groups can be further divided into groups seeking to restore original material in as accurate-to-the-original a manner as possible and those that seek simply to restore a semblance of the original game (often varying from original material in favor of more modern game innovations). Yet other fan groups have expanded the concepts embodied by Satellaview games to introduce Satellaview elements to non-Satellaview games such as by inserting the BS-X avatar into the original Zelda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce or hacking this game to replace its original dungeons and overworld with that of Inishie no Sekiban's. Narrower restorations are also frequently attempted such as the restoration of original Satellaview music from period VHS tapes either by ear or by splicing "clean" portions of songs into a contiguous whole.KiddoCabbusses. Satellaview Soundtracks – Music Splice Hackory Custom.. Satellablog. 9 August 2009.KiddoCabbusses. Copypasta from Serenesforest – NND recreates BSFE music.. Satellablog. 16 July 2010. In a similar vein, narrow alterations such as the translation of in-game Satellaview game text into languages other than Japanese are frequently attempted by fans.KiddoCabbusses. Fluff post to advertise other people - because I'm in a rush to update. Also, I'm going to /r/... Satellablog. 22 May 2008. Game-specific projects *''BS Zelda'' restoration - Dumped ROM material from BS Zelda no Densetsu (MAP1 and MAP2) as well as BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban and Zelda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce have been recovered and restored. The games have been released as real-hardware-compatible ROMS, and most recently a patch has been released to display original voice-over text as subtitles. Further narrow-issue projects are underway for issues such as the translation into English of all original voice-over material and the recovery and restoration of all original Satellaview music present in these ROMs.KiddoCabbusses. Satellaview Soundtracks – BS Zelda music, as from album sources.. Satellablog. 20 November 2009. *''BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia Senki'' restoration - A mod/mock-up of the game was produced using SRPG Maker 95 in 2009KiddoCabbusses. Satellaview dojin projects?. Satellablog. 21 March 2009.KiddoCabbusses. Satellaview dojin projects?. Satellablog. 21 March 2009. and other fanmade attempts followed.KiddoCabbusses. More fanmade BSFE.. Satellablog. 21 April 2009. Efforts by fans also led to great advances in the restoration of the Satellaview-original music for the game.KiddoCabbusses. Copypasta from Serenesforest – NND recreates BSFE music.. Satellablog. 16 July 2010. Since these early attempts, the game has seen great amounts of development by the original company responsible for developing it, Intsys. Fan-driven pressure on Intsys first resulted in actual comment on the game by Intsys in 2009 and since then the game has been re-released for the Nintendo DS. *''BS Tantei Club: Yuki ni Kieru Kako'' restoration - A fan project named "Project Gam" has been formed to restore this game, and several attempts to restore Satellaview-original music have also been made. *''BS Shin Onigashima'' music restoration - Attempts to restore the Satellaview-original music for this game have been made. *''BS-X: Sore wa Namae o Nusumareta Machi no Monogatari'' restoration - Repeated efforts have been made to restore functionality to the original BS-X interface cartridge. These projects have been geared toward the goal of allowing players to launch Satellaview games via the BS-X BIOS just as in the original days of Satellaview. Individual fans such as d4s and Seru-kun/LuigiBlood have made significant advances in achieving this goal, however the projects are still incomplete. Seru-Kun/LuigiBlood's "BS-X Project" attempts to fake a satellite signal to the Satellaview in order to allow it to "download" content from non-satellite sources such as a computer hard-drive. This was previously attempted by Japanese programmer, d4s.KiddoCabbusses. Just a bit of advertising for a friend…. Satellablog. 14 September 2010. Seru-kun/LuigiBlood's Satellaview homebrew hack aims to enable the launching of any game via the BS-X bios and code for games that would have originally been on 8M packs.KiddoCabbusses. “Hello Satellaview!” homebrew ROM is born.. Satellablog. 29 July 2010. The in-game text of the BS-X cartridge has also been translated into English on more than one occasion. *''RPG Tsukūru 2'' memory pack functionality restoration - Seru-Kun/LuigiBlood has posted a patch for RPG Tsukuru 2 to repair memory pack loading issues.KiddoCabbusses. Rush Rush Rush – 4: LuigiBlood’s “BS-X Project” updates, and other hacks.. Satellablog. 21 October 2010. *''Sound Novel Tsukūru'' memory pack functionality restoration - Seru-Kun/LuigiBlood has posted a patch for Sound Novel Tsukūru to repair memory pack loading issues. Fan events On 11 April 2009, the BS Zelda Shrine held a competition surrounding what at the time was the most fully restored version of BS Zelda Inishie no Sekiban. The event was referred to as the "Master Quest" and the restored ROM was modified to include a few changes specific to this run. The event was scored according to the scoring rules applying to the original April 1997 Satellaview broadcast, and prize for the top score was an entry on the website's "Hall of Fame."Con. Master Quest broadcast run, Winner gets an entry in the hall of fame. BS Zelda Homepage. 11 April 2009. References *